About Travis B

Hey, my name is Travis and I'm a Senior (do something crazy...) at RCS. I've been at Riverdale since 6th grade and am proud to be a Falcon! Riverdale's a great school and there's a lot to blog about. But mine's mostly going to be about the Wind Ensemble (our band), Basketball (one of my favorite sports), and Chem with Ms.Findlay (one of my favorite classes). I'm usually hanging out with friends, but sometimes if I can't find them, I'm awkwardly dancing around campus. Read my posts and you'll get to know me in no time!

Posts by Travis B

Back At It

It's been a while since I've done a blog post but it's good to be back. I've been pretty busy so far this year, so I'll try to cover a bit of everything I've been doing. One big thing, for me at least, is that I've been fortunate enough to have been elected student body co-president. My partner gave our speech last spring, and were voted in by our fellow students and Riverdale faculty (ergo the name Student Faculty Council).
A big thing we've done so far is start a Point System for people who attend Riverdale athletic events. Students who attend games (for a minimum amount of time) are awarded points based on the difficulty of attending the game. These ...

Final Blog

This is my final blog of the year and I'm going to talk about something my friends are talking about, our gender neutral bathroom. First, however, I'll talk about other things that have been going on.
The Jazz Band performed at the Senior PA Potluck Dinner and it all went very well. The songs which featured senior vocalists sounded amazing and those were definitely my favorite songs.
Yesterday in our track meet I ran a 55.3 second 400m dash, I was hoping to break 55 but I guess I'll just have to try at champs in a week and a half. Tristan Yapalater, a senior in his second year on the team, ran a 51.1 second 400 on Saturday and placed third ...

End Game

The school year is almost over and it's pretty exciting.
The jazz band is performing tomorrow at the Parents Association potluck dinner and that should be fun. We get to play music for about half an hour and eat when we're not playing. Two of our songs, "At Last" and "The Best Is Yet to Come," will feature two senior vocalists from Riverdale's female a capella group, the Rivertones.
Track has been going really well. There have been three Ivy League meets and a few weekend meets. It's strange to think that there's only about a month left in the season even though it feels like it just started.
Next week Friday we have College Day and the Constructing Olympics. College Day at ...

Spring Break Plans

There are only a few days left before Spring Break and I've been ready for it since the end of Winter Break. I plan on doing college visits over the break, primarily the northeast, just to get a sense of the type of atmosphere I'd like.
This week I have a test in all my classes, I took my Bio and PreCalc tests yesterday, and I have French and Constructing America tomorrow and Friday. I think the two tests I've taken went well, and I'm hoping the next two will go as smoothly.
In Jazz Band we're having two senior vocalists sing with us. The songs that they'll be featured on are "At Last" and "The Best is Yet to Come". The ...

Back from DC and College Process Starts

We've been back from DC for about a month now; our schedule hasn't given us the opportunity to blog till now. The trip was a lot of fun, albeit incredibly cold. We had a nice balance of class events and personal free time to explore the city and do as we please. My favorite (class) event was when we all went to see the play "Our Town" at Ford's Theater. They try to keep the theater the same as it was in Lincoln's time, which unfortunately for me meant pillars obstructing a view of the stage - I'm guessing they didn't have stronger material to reinforce the balcony. But I thought the play was very good and the presentation was ...

Midterms, PAL, and DC’s coming

Midterms are over! The week went by as smoothly as it could and I'm happy with the results. Despite the emphasis and time put into midterms, they (luckily) don't count as much as one would think. They account for 20% of your semester grade. So to put that into perspective, you would have to get a whole letter grade difference than your average in order for a midterm to affect your grade at all, i.e. if your average was an A- in a course, you would have to get below a B- on the exam in order for your average to drop to a B+. Of course, the reverse also applies, but you have to take the bad with the ...

Back to Business

We're back in school after two weeks off and it's bittersweet. I did miss my friends, but staying up late and getting up late was absolutely amazing. I spent the first week in New Jersey with my relatives and that was great. We went to a sushi place (East) in Teaneck and it tasted fantastic. I spent the second week at home with my parents and siblings. I got lucky the last three days because public schools were open and I had the house to myself. But now we're back to reality and back to the grind. Midterms are only two weeks away, but luckily there are no midterms for history/English courses so the typical student takes only three midterms. ...

Jazz Band

Last night we had our Jazz Band concert. We've been practicing (4 days a week together, plus time alone) since September, and all our work culminated in our concert last night. We played yesterday morning in front of the school, and I was extremely nervous. But the concert that night in front of our parents and dean wasn't nearly as nerve-wracking. We played half a dozen songs, ranging from the Jackson Five's "I Want You Back" to John Coltrane's "Impressions". We all had solo features, during which we improvised. To those who may not know what improvisation, or improv, consists of in music, I'll explain. We play notes, in any style we see fit, as long as it stays within ...

Keeping It Up

Thanksgiving Break just passed, and I'm already counting down the days until Winter Break. School is pretty much back to normal, and last night we had the science symposium. It featured student presentations of research they had done with the help of scientists/teachers/alumni over the past few summers. The studies covered a broad spectrum of topics ranging from how to objectively quantify pain using neural response to changing protein amounts in the body by finding optimal protein synthesis temperatures to seeing how low gravity would affect gene expression in mice. The reason I found the symposium to be interesting was the broad array of topics, so that if one thing was a bit too complicated for you or not something ...

Back In Stride

A few weeks ago New York--and the majority of the East Coast, was hit by Hurricane Sandy. I was lucky enough to not be affected at all, and our school lost power on both campuses for about a week, during which we didn't have school (nor did any NYC public schools). Although I was not personally affected (I did not even lose power for a single moment) but I have friends (primarily from downtown and New Jersey) who had experiences ranging from mild inconvenience to significant devastation. Our grade, specifically, has decided to donate the money that we had raised from Candy Grams (originally meant for our prom) to a charity in order to support recovery efforts. We (mostly, if ...

About the Student Blog

Welcome to the Riverdale Student Blog! Written by the students themselves, this blog serves as a peek inside the life of your not-so-average Riverdale students. We hope you enjoy learning more about their lives and experiences!